For decades, the standard textbook for Mediterranean environmental diplomacy was built on a comforting premise known as “environmental peacebuilding.” The theory promised that climate change would force ideological enemies into logical partnerships, transforming shared water and solar scarcity into bridges for regional peace.

By 2026, the brutal escalations across the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean have completely shattered this illusion. As precision munitions, drone swarms, and cyber-attacks targeted the centralized infrastructure of the region, we learned a terrifying lesson: in a volatile geopolitical architecture, climate adaptation assets are treated as high-priority military targets. It is time to retire the naive environmental peacebuilding paradigm. To secure our collective future, we must pivot to hard Climate Realism.

Climate Realism demands that we confront what I term the “Climate Syndrome”. This syndrome defines the toxic chasm between a state’s high-level statutory commitments to global treaties—such as emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement—and its deficient operational execution on the ground. This failure........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)